Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Invention of Boredom

Watching cartoons with the girls today I looked for the stuff that did it for my dad when I was a kid: Bullwinkle and Rocky, The Underdog Show, Dudley Dooright, Peabody and Sherman, and Fractured Fairy Tales. They were all from the early sixties and ran for longer in syndication. They're all great, but Fractured Fairy Tales stands a cut above in terms of the cool early 60s mod art and clearly adult humor. This was my favorite from today. A lovely princess steps on a witch's toe and gets turned into a bore. This episode features the best cartoon witch incantation ever:

From my magic medium come ennui and tediumdreary dreary dull and bleary Beauty's voice will make them wearyordinary people sleep while Beauty now is just a creep!

Warning: Strong Opinions and Language

About Me

“Being is becoming,” and if we’re not “becoming,” we’re probably not doing much “being” either. This blog was started in a half-assed attempt at self-excavation. I have at least two unusual personality traits. The first is that I’m abnormally comfortable with ambiguity. I can happily muck about in the gray areas for years on end. This is probably why I love Seattle. The other is that I have a completely unrealistic belief in my own agency, which I tend to act upon. This blog has changed my life in more ways than I ever imagined. As my job as ED of a activist newspaper sold by homeless people, my vision for organizing, my thinking as a teacher, my history as a working-poor loser turned middle-class “advocate,” and my life as a parent swirled about me, this blog has been a path toward the center. We live in dangerous times, and the seductions to an easy, half-lived life of anesthetized materialism are all around. I have come to understand that my work is to be a revolutionary, both out in the world and within myself, turning over what is old, rotten, stale, and repressive, and building for a future where we can all find happiness and have the things we truly need.